A JACKASS IN JAVA: DAY TWENTY FIVE (11JUN2013)

     Last night, Randy had said that we should surf the right tomorrow. “The tide will be low in the morning,” he had said. “We’ll catch it before it gets swamped out. The swell’s going out too, so it will be a good day to just go for it. If you wipeout, you won’t touch the bottom.”

#

     0600. I close my eyes and open them. It’s 0630. I wake up and take a look outside. Randy’s bike is gone. Maybe he went to grab breakfast. I start getting my gear together. It’s 0700. I think he already left.

     I head to Compound One. Reece and Ana are there, but Grant is gone. “Fuck, Grant left with Randy, huh?” I say.

     “Grant left but not with Randy,” says Reece.

     “You going to Machines today?”

     “Maybe later when the tide drops.”

     I’m at the shop getting a liter before heading over the bridge which leads out of town. It’s the first time I’ve made this ride by myself, so I try to be extra careful. It’s only 0715 when I leave. When I’m three quarters of the way there, it starts to rain. Fuckin’ rain. Did I mention how I’m so over the rain? 

Small World:

     Machines is empty, save for Grant and Randy on the right. I grab my gear right away and walk to the empty warung to hang my backpack, when I notice a guy sitting on the bench out front. He’s a white dude. Probably a German.

     “Hi,” he says. “Good morning.”

     “Hello.”

     “Do you speak English?”

     “Yeah, man.” My brother had told me about guys arriving here from Huntington and San Diego, so I assume he’s one of them. “You’re one of the Huntington guys right, or San Diego?”

     “No, man. I live in Hawaii. I just got here last night from Jogja. Some Muslim guy let me sleep on his floor. He was pretty cool, but I was dodging mosquitoes all night.”

     Poor guy. His face is all bitten up. He has on pants and looks out of place. The backpack on his shoulder is all he has with him, and something about him is strangely familiar. He looks like this guy I know named Ryan. I met him at a polar therapy event in NorCal. Ryan had came down to El Segundo, and I had taken him out surfing with the boys. It’s funny how strangers always remind you of people you know.

     “You wouldn’t happen to have a brother would you?” I say.

     “Yeah, I do.”

     There’s no way. “His name wouldn’t happen to be Ryan, would it?”

     “Yeah, Ryan. He’s my twin brother.”

     From here it all clicks. He confirms it. They’re both from Oregon, spent some time living in Hawaii, and they are both travelling vagabonds. His name is Doug. I ask him what the hell he’s doing over here.

     “I’m on business in Manila, working on a mahogany deal, but if it doesn’t go through it will end up turning into a goose egg.” He curls his fingers and makes an O with his hand. He tells me more about his travels, how he rode a moped through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia all the way to China and back. “It was cold,” he says. 

     I am not as well travelled as I thought. Randy comes out of the water. “I tried to wake you up,” he says. “I knocked twice, started up my bike, and waited.”

     “I didn’t hear you,” I say. “But it was my fault. I should have just set my alarm.”

     I tell Doug I’ll talk to him later, and I paddle out to sit with Grant in the lineup. The tide has gotten too high. I’m here too late. I catch a wave and get one backhand topturn. After that, everything turns to moosh.

     Back on the shore, I see Doug walking back to the empty warung. I hold up my board and motion for him to give it a try. His eyebrows rise, and he hurries to grab his bag. After he changes he says, “Thanks, man. I just want to get wet real quick. I hope I can rent a board from someone.”

     I have to let him use my board. He’s Ryan’s brother, and spreading the aloha is part of what surfing is about. Grant and I watch as Doug paddles too far out. He takes a couple closeouts, but we have a feeling that he doesn’t care.

     “So what’s next?” I ask Grant.

     “I’m gonna find some work in Australia, probably until November, and then it’s back to the UK.”

     “November. Just in time for the holidays.”

     “Yeah,” he says, “but I might not stay that long. I might head to Austria and get a job with Sonia at the ski resort. I’d hate to go home and brace a winter right away. I’d rather do spend my winter in Austria.”

     “And after that?”

     “I don’t know, mate. I don’t really have anything planned that far ahead.”

     We look out into the ocean and watch Doug again. He paddles towards the inside and catches some white wash in. He was out there for a half an hour.

     Doug says that the guy who lives right behind the warung is going to let him stay there for the couple of days that he’s here. “I just want to get one Indo barrel,” says Doug. “One barrel, that’s all I want.”

     “Yup,” I say. “I know the feeling.” Grant and I tell him as much as we can about the spot, hoping that it will help his chances of scoring some surf. We tell him that we’ll probably see him again, and then we head out.

     The ride back is pretty mellow, and I’m keeping up with Grant pretty well. When we get back to Indo-Napili about forty minutes later, he turns to me at the traffic signal and says, “Let’s try the new Padangs.”

     “Okay,” I say I’m open for some adventure. So we head further inland away from the coastline. The streets here are busier. A cop on the side of the road directs traffic from an intersection. Grant pulls over, and here we are in front of the new Padangs.

     The inside isn’t a shack like the other one. There are nice tables with real cloth and wooden chairs. Customers stare at us as we enter. I assume that none of the Luftwaffe ever made it this deep into town.

     The woman working the counter doesn’t let customers serve themselves. Instead, we point, and she scoops. The food here is much cleaner and in higher abundance.

     “No rocks in my rice,” I say. “It’s a fucking miracle.”

     “It is isn’t it?” says Grant. On his next bite, I hear a loud crunch. “Fuck,” he says. He feels around with his tongue and pulls out a rock. “And things were going so well.”

     This morning’s surf session was a fail, but the surf isn’t doing anything here right now, not until the tide drops at least. When I get back to the compound, I tell Randy that I may check out Chocos in the evening. I plop onto my bed and take a nap.

Diaper Town:

     It’s 1430. I should get up. What the fuck is that noise outside? Of course. I sit up and take a closer look outside. It’s raining . . . again. Since I’ve been here we’ve only had about five days without rain? Choco Point works best on a south west swell. A south west direction brings the swell directly to Chocos, but there isn’t much swell right now. I don’t expect much. It shouldn’t be that great. Then I think about the other day when it pissed all morning into the afternoon. Everyone else went to the harbor while I stayed at the Rajawali, thinking that no one would be paddling out. I can’t miss out again, especially after missing the morning window of surf.

     I throw on my boardshorts and my rashguard. Fuck it. It’s a short drive, and if the surf’s good enough to paddle out in, I’ll be wet anyway.

     The rain stings as I pull the throttle and advance against it. Puddles have already started to form. When are there not puddles here? When I pull up to Choco Point, I see that no one’s out. The tide is draining, like it’s been the last couple of days in the evening. Technically, this is good. This place works well on the low tide, but it’s small right now. I wait, and a little three-foot set breaks at the middle of the wave. Sold. I unstrap my board and start walking out. On the shallow walk on the way to the lineup, I’m completely alone. Even the fishermen have called it a day. I turn around and look where I parked my moped. Not another surfer has arrived. I do a rain dance with my surfboard out in the open. Rain is falling even harder now. It’s crazy really. No one wants any of this. In this rain, why go out? Everyone else is in their bungalows, chilling and reading books. I could be in my room watching the rain through my window or from the lineup.

     The water’s dirty as always, but the good thing about low tide is that all the rubbish is either on the shoreline or has already been swept away. Later when the tide comes up, it will take all the dirty diapers away and out to sea, where marine life can munch on our human waste and trash. It’s ironic, this beautiful place, how every time it rains, the trash from all of the villages end up in the ocean that most of us travel to experience and enjoy. So whose fault is it? The Indonesians or the Western industries that have introduced the products that Indonesian infrastructure isn’t designed to dispose of properly?

     I’ve seen the water much worse than it is right now. It’s filthy but manageable. Just don’t drink the water. On every duckdive I shut my eyes tight and exhale out of my nose. Ear plugs would be useful out here. I just hope I can survive this trip without a sinus infection.

     While the rain is cold, the water is warm. It’s odd. I kick my feet around to spread the warmth from below up to my thighs. The rain starts coming down harder in sheets. Low clouds hover over the cliffs to my side. The water is forced to be glassy from the shower pattering its surface. And then there are the waves. They’re not that great. Three feet and soft, but I have the right board for it. Actually, Rick’s Zippy would make a killing out here, but I wish I had Cheryl’s Don Kadowaki Fish. It’s like two-and-a-half inches thick and twenty inches wide, about five-foot-five inches in length. Ahhh, that board would be so rippable out here. But I still have a lot of volume. I paddle into waves late to make sure I get into them. Pointing my nose down the line, surfing becomes a game of not losing the wave. I crouch and stay deep in the pocket, waiting for the section to stand up, where I shoot out of the pocket like a boxer’s jab, quickly turning on the face and cutting back. A lot of waves I lose by gambling on my turns and going over the lip on accident. Every once in a while, bigger sets show up, good for at least two turns, but it’s hard to get three. Even though the surf isn’t that great, I’m out here by myself, and . . . the waves are still surfable. Surfing completely alone is a rarity, and I have to appreciate this; I have to remember that El Porto and Trestles is a zoo. I must enjoy this while I can.

     It’s 1730 when I get out, just about dark. I pulled a two-hour-and-fifteen-minute solo session. On the way to my moped, I see diapers spread out along the shoreline. Some of them are half buried in sand, and others are stick in sticks and branches. I would’ve expected to see more things like plastic items floating from the river mouth, but diapers . . . this is straight up Diaper Bay. I wonder what the villagers are thinking when they toss these diapers into the streams. It may not even be the villagers. The streams snake through Indo quite a long distance. It may be someone in the city who just happened to change a diaper. Why hold onto it? Probably while he’s on his scooter he casually tosses it over the bridge and into the creek without looking back. Fuck it, right?

#

     After I shower and change, I head over to Compound One. Reece . . . I barely recognize him. He got a haircut today. His hair is so short. He completely shaved his beard, but he kept his mustache. It’s well groomed now. I hate it. I’m disappointed. I miss his ruff and rugged look. Now he just looks like a child molester. 

     Ana’s mad because she missed the surf at Chocos. Since none of them surfed in the evening, they aren’t hungry, but they’re willing to go to the market. When we get there, I order two meals: nasi pecel with ayam (chicken) and a nasi pecel with talur (egg). It only comes out to 20000 IR, about two bucks. From there we head to Indomaret and do our ice cream rounds. I host a little movie night in my room and watch Stoked and Broke. When I see the SoCal waves in the movie all the way from Encinitas down to Pacific Beach, I remember how the waves back home can be good. Not like, shit your pants throaty, but just fun and rippable. The movie makes me homesick.

     “I don’t want to go home,” says Ana. “I leave in three days. I’m trying to stay away from home.”

     Reese, Grant, and Ana have all been away from home for over a year. Fuck. I can’t do it. I miss Briana, miss my crew, miss my kitchen, and my PS3. I have a year before I graduate, two more semesters. I still have a life in Cali, believe it or not. It’s weird to think that I’ll be returning there.

     When everyone leaves, I take a moment to look in the mirror. My mustache and Fu Manchu are so wiry. I’ve lost some weight and some muscle mass, that’s for sure. I’m dark. I already know back home that I’ll be the darkest guy in the lineup. It’s been good though, has it not? No cell phone, no email at the push of a button, none of society’s pressures; it’s just been me, the surf, and the people, but I need balance. I’m sure I’ll gain something from this trip. That night when Al was here, we had that party out front at our compound with Reece, Grant, Ana, Camille, Sonia, and Gayun. Al had looked around and then at me with a serious stare. “Enjoy it,” he had said. “Enjoy it while you can. Pretty soon you’ll be in El Segundo, sitting in your living room. I’ll be home too, sitting on my couch, thinking, ‘Fuck, I was in Indo.’ Enjoy it, Matt.” I will, Al. I have five full days left. No stress, no pressure, just fun and enjoyment. I’ll take it in, and I’ll also be stoked on the 17^th to return to my life.